The building industry uses a number of flexible members, such as cables, wires and flexible tubes, for providing utilities and services to a building. For example, wires and cables, including inner-duct and fiber optic cables, are used to bring electricity, television, telephone, data, Internet and other well-known services into a building or other known location. Additionally, gas, water and other types of fluids can be brought into the building using flexible tubes. These buildings can include residential, commercial and industrial structures.
During the construction of these buildings, the wires and other flexible members are pulled and positioned along or within the walls, ceilings and/or floors before the framing or wall supports are covered by drywall or other similar wallboards. Many times, the flexible members must be pulled around multiple corners during their installation. This can require that a workman be positioned at each and every corner to feed the flexible member around the corner. This is often impractical because of the number of people on an installation crew can be less than the number of corners that one of these flexible members will extend around. When personnel are not available to be at each corner (pull point), the person installing the flexible member must pull an extra length of the flexible member at the corner and form figure-eight's on the floor with the extra flexible member. After enough is gathered, the person will pull the gathered length along the path to the intended location or to one side of another corner and repeat the procedure. If the amount gathered at a corner is not enough to reach the intended point, the person must again go back to the first corner, gather more of the flexible member and repeat the time consuming and laborious process. This must be done for every corner that the flexible member is being positioned around. As a result, each time the person installing the flexible member needs to move the wire, he must go back to each and every corner and gather an amount of the flexible member there before pulling it to the next corner. This is a very time consuming process that can significantly delay the amount of time needed to wire or install the flexible members.
If an installer attempts to pull the flexible member an extended distance and/or around a corner, the flexible member will likely be physically damaged. Such a damaged flexible member could have kinks, nicks and/or cuts in its outer jacket and its inner core, along with internal damage caused by over stretching the core of the flexible member beyond an allowable limit during the application of the excessive tension and pull forces needed to pull the cable along the excessive length. Therefore, it follows that the more corners that the flexible member is extended over and the longer the distance of the pull, the more difficult it will be to pull the elongated member, the greater the magnitude of the force needed to pull the flexible member and the more damage that can result during the pull.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,442,994 to Logsdon discloses a plumbing pipe hanger that is secured to a wall by a nail inserted into an opening in the hanger. The pipe hanger receives and supports rigid plumbing pipes in an opening that has a slightly larger diameter than the pipe that it receives. This hanger is used in place of “plumber's tape.” This hanger is only used to support rigid pipes. As a result, its interior wall has a plurality of projections that extend toward the center of the opening. These projections can trap and damage cables or wires positioned within or pulled through the pipe hanger. Additionally, the pipe hanger includes sharp lateral edges that would not permit a wire, cable or other flexible member to be pulled through it without possibly being damaged. Additionally, it is unlikely that the pipe hanger would be approved under proposed U.L. Standard #2239 4.1.1 that requires rounded and smooth surfaces on hardware in contact with an insulated conductor. As is well known, damage to a wire or flexible gas line can jeopardize lives because of the real potential for electrocution, fires or asphyxiation. Additionally, damage to these flexible members can ruin their performance and require that the entire length be rerun, thereby increasing the time and cost of the job.
Additionally, newly announced and existing standards for minimum installation requirements must be adhered to when any or all of the above mentioned flexible members are pulled and/or installed along a portion of a structure or building. One example of the newly announced standards in the telecommunication installation industry resides in TIA/EIA-568-B.1. This standard sets forth a minimum bend radius for a four-pair UTP cable under no-load conditions. This bend radius standard impacts small commercial and residential CAT 5 or CAT 6 installations due to a lack of appropriate hardware to facilitate compliance with the required minimum bend radii. For example, the pipe hanger disclosed U.S. Pat. No. 4,442,994, conventional J-hooks and bridle rings do not provide the support needed to achieve and maintain the flexible members at these minimum bend radii. Similarly, they cannot provide effective, practical support to most high performance telecommunication cables at their load and no-load minimum bend radius requirements and, as a result, do not provide effective cable management. As is known in the art, tighter bends in cables (minimum bend radii violations) can change the relationship of the pairs in the cable, degrade the transmission properties of the cable, reduce network performance and make it difficult to isolate the source of a problem within the network. These and other prior art hangers do not include members that can guide and support flexible members so that existing, as well as proposed, standards are met. Additionally, the prior art devices cannot be easily and quickly adapted for meeting different standards in multiple regions. For example, a hanger that may be used in one region may not be useable in another region because it cannot be easily and acceptably altered to meet the standards of this second region.
A need exists in the art for members that individually or as part of a system provide a controlled pull path that is free of obstructions, that supports the flexible member as it is pulled and after it is installed, that reduces the amount of needed pull force so that a smooth pull is achieved and that meet codes.